Richard Wright and the Literature of Natchez

Richard Wright was born on a plantation near Natchez in 1908. Black Boy — his autobiography of growing up Black in the Jim Crow South — opens in Natchez with a scene so vivid it defined a genre: a four-year-old Wright setting fire to his grandparents' house out of boredom and terror. The poverty, hunger, and racial violence he experienced in Mississippi became the raw material for Native Son and the rest of a body of work that changed American literature. Greg Iles, a contemporary Natchez native, has set his Penn Cage thriller series in a fictionalized version of the city, exploring the layers of race, power, and history that make Natchez what it is. The city generates literature because its contradictions demand explanation.